What Would Jeggit Do?

For those of you who still wear your WWJD bracelets, you need wonder no longer, because the great man's latest blogpost leaves little doubt that the answer to the question is: give up, throw in the towel.  In fact, Jeggit isn't just giving up on independence for the fabled "generation", but for two generations, judging from his comment about how our grandchildren might yet get it right.

Does Jeggit have a point? Short answer: no.  If the independence cause was as dead as he seems to believe, Scotland would look very different from how it does today.  It would look, in short, like the Scotland of twenty years ago.  There would be a unionist coalition government at Holyrood, with no indication in the opinion polls of a pro-independence alternative being viable.  The SNP would have only a tiny handful of seats in the House of Commons.  Support for independence would be in the doldrums.  All of those things could very well happen again at some point in the future, but for the time being there's absolutely no sign of it.

Instead, what do we have? A majority pro-independence SNP-Green government, which would almost certainly be re-elected if there was an election tomorrow.  Pro-independence parties (the SNP, Alba and Margaret Ferrier) have over 80% of the Scottish seats in the Commons, and that situation might actually improve if there was a fresh election.  And support for independence stands at either 50% or 55%, depending on which of the two most recent polls you believe.  We are, in a nutshell, in a phenomenally strong position.  We have the means to bring about a vote on independence, and we have a realistic chance of winning that vote if it occurs.

There is, admittedly, a practical problem.  Our pro-independence government has been hijacked by an SNP leadership faction that probably still believes in independence in principle, but is far more preoccupied with sustaining itself in power.  If, as a by-product of staying in power, independence was somehow to magically fall into these people's laps, they would be happy enough about it.  But they're certainly not going to take any risks to make it happen.  And in the real world, independence can't and won't happen without risks being taken.

But this is a practical problem with a practical solution.  A useful comparison is the ban on fox-hunting in England, which was brought in under the Blair government.  Labour were elected on a commitment to legislate for a ban, but the leadership had no intention of actually doing anything about it because they didn't want to offend small 'c' conservatives in the countryside.  In the end, though, the Labour grass-roots and backbench MPs piled on enough pressure that the leadership realised they would pay too high a price by failing to act.

So the task for all of us is to make the SNP leadership realise that they will pay heavily if they fail to honour their promise of holding a referendum in 2023.  That pressure can come from within the SNP, or from outside via support for Alba.  Jeggit, however, insists that Alba will never command majority support in Scotland for as long as it holds its current position on the trans issue.  That's odd on two counts: firstly, opinion polls convincingly show that Alba's position on the trans issue is shared by the majority of the population, while Jeggit's position is shared by a relatively modest minority.  And secondly, Alba don't actually need to command a majority anyway - they just need 5-10% of the vote to force the SNP to think about what it would take to win those voters back.  And we all know what it would take - genuine action on independence.

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Boxing Day drama as new Opinium poll is first online poll since early September to show support for independence at 50% or higher

So I've got my wish - the Opinium poll for the Sunday Mail contains independence referendum voting intention numbers, so at last we have an opportunity to judge the impact of the Downing Street party on the state of play.  But actually the results have ended up muddying the waters somewhat.

Should Scotland be an independent country? (Opinium, 15th-22nd December 2021)

Yes 50% (-1)

No 50% (+1)

There are two completely different ways of interpreting this.  There's a small (and statistically insignificant) 1% swing to No since the last poll conducted by Opinium in early September.  However, that September poll was an oasis in the desert - of the twelve online polls conducted by all firms since mid-May, it was the only one that didn't show a No lead.  So it just depends on how you interpret the September poll - was it an outlier caused by sampling variation? If so, the salient point about the new poll is that it's the first online poll since September to show Yes breaking the 50% barrier, and thus could indicate that the Downing Street party scandal has caused a modest pro-Yes swing.

On the other hand, the Yes lead in the September poll could indicate that Opinium have a slightly Yes-friendly methodology compared to other online firms, in which case the new poll could suggest that nothing much has changed.  As ever, we'll have to wait for a couple more polls from a couple more firms to find out which interpretation is the correct one.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only). 

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Boxing Day poll shows Scottish Tories on course for a 1997-style total wipeout at Westminster

Bizarrely, given that it's currently either Christmas Day or Boxing Day (depending on your point of view on the significance of midnight), there's a poll out.  It's in the Sunday Mail, and so far all I know is what's contained on the front page of the paper, which is very little.  No indication of which polling company was used (although I suspect it might have been Survation, because the Sunday Mail have used them before), and there's no sign of the full voting intention numbers.  The only thing that's revealed is that the Scottish Tories are projected to be on course for a 1997-style total wipeout at Westminster, which is suggested to be as a result of the fallout from the Downing Street party scandal.  Hopefully there might be independence numbers in the poll, because I'd like to know if the scandal has had any effect on those.  But the Tory vote share must be low by recent standards, because a seats projection of zero is a long way from the norm.

I'll update this post with the poll results as and when they emerge.

UPDATE: It's turned out to be an Opinium poll, not Survation.

Scottish voting intentions for the next UK general election (Opinium / Sunday Mail, 15th-22nd December 2021):

SNP 48% (-3)

Labour 22% (+5)

Conservatives 17% (-4)

Liberal Democrats 7% (+2)

The percentage changes are measured from the last Opinium poll, which was commissioned by Sky News in September.

Seats projection (with changes from 2019 election): SNP 56 (+8), Liberal Democrats 2 (-2), Labour 1 (-), Conservatives 0 (-6)

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Neale Hanvey, the Alba Party MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, has an extended opinion piece in Lesbian and Gay News about the three recent opinion polls on GRA reform - namely the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll from October, the Murray Blackburn Mackenzie / Survation poll from November, and the very recent For Women Scotland / Panelbase poll, all of which showed overwhelming public opposition to legally-recognised gender self-identification.  You can read Neale's piece HERE.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only). 

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The troubling side of public opinion: one-quarter of Scottish voters think defendants should be regarded as guilty until proved innocent

Because Wings Over Scotland has theoretically shut up shop, I haven't been keeping an eye on the site, and I was surprised to discover today that there have been a couple of brief updates since I last checked.  One of them is a thoroughly disturbing result from a Panelbase poll commissioned by Wings.  It found that 26% of Scottish voters want the presumption of innocence to be abolished for men accused of rape, with the accusation regarded as true unless the defendant can disprove it.  A further 22% want jury trials to be abolished for rape cases, in order to address what the poll question implies is an abysmally low conviction rate.

What I find curious is that Stuart uses the title "Believing Her", which - unless it's meant ironically - might give the impression of approving of the poll results, something which would be totally at odds with his views on a high-profile court case last year.  He did not believe the complainers in that case, and based on the verdict he was entirely right not to do so.  So would he really be keen on a system that would have required the court and the jury to start with the assumption that those complainers were telling the truth? 

It's sometimes said that false allegations of sexual assault are exceptionally rare - but a) that claim is not uncontested, and b) even if it's right, nobody seriously argues that false complaints are totally non-existent.  Reversing the burden of proof would almost certainly see men go to prison for sex crimes they did not commit - the only question is how many.  There are good reasons for suspecting that the amount of false complaints would skyrocket once people realise that they can easily destroy someone they have a grudge against, and without any particularly high risk of repercussions.

Of course in the real world, no government in a liberal democracy would introduce a presumption of guilt, regardless of public opinion on the matter. However, the fact that so many people hold such an extreme view means that the government could be pushing at an open door if they opt to erode the safeguards for defendants in more limited ways.  This is the end result of an ideology that would have us believe that the role of the courts is to provide a service for complainers by securing a conviction, rather than to test the allegations and establish whether or not they are true. 

In fairness, people who took part in the poll were probably heavily influenced by the claims made in the question wording about the conviction rate for rape and how it is supposedly much worse than for other crimes. That made it very hard for respondents not to say that "something drastic must be done". But there is an alternative point of view - this blogpost (written, I believe, by a Liberal Democrat) compellingly advances the view that an apples and oranges comparison may be creating a very misleading impression of the statistics.

34% of respondents in the Wings poll take a relatively moderate stance by saying that the conviction rate should be boosted by abolishing the Scots law requirement for corroborating evidence.  This wouldn't drive a coach and horses through the principles of justice in quite the same way as a presumption of guilt or the abolition of jury trials.  Nevertheless, my recollection is that corroboration is regarded by legal experts as balancing out other disadvantages that defendants have under Scots law - for example the fact that they can be found guilty of serious crimes on the basis of just eight votes on a fifteen-strong jury.  That is not the case in England, and it may be that we'd need to reconsider the question of a threshold for majority verdicts if the need for corroboration was to be discarded.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only). 

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A third poll in quick succession shows Scottish voters are overwhelmingly opposed to legally-recognised gender self-ID

So make that a hat-trick.  The Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll on GRA reform in October showed a massive majority against legally-recognised gender self-ID, as did a Survation poll a few days ago for the policy analysis organisation Murray Blackburn Mackenzie.  Now there's also a brand new multi-question Panelbase poll commissioned by For Women Scotland which has produced the same outcome.

The format of the main self-ID question is closer to the Survation poll than to the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll, because it's binary-choice and asks whether people wishing to change their legal gender should need to be assessed by medical experts, or whether they should be able to self-identify.  71% think medical approval should be required, with only 29% in favour of self-ID.  Without having seen the datasets yet, I'm not sure whether those are the figures after Don't Knows were removed, or whether there wasn't a Don't Know option on this occasion.  The equivalent figures in the Survation poll were 53% for a doctor's approval being required, and 27% in favour of self-ID, with the remainder saying 'Don't Know'.  The Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll had a four-option format, with 20% of respondents favouring self-ID, compared with a combined 58% for the three options which excluded the possibility of self-ID.

The results of two other questions from the For Women Scotland poll have been released so far.  33% of respondents think trans women who have male genitalia should be allowed to access women's changing rooms, hospital wards and refuges, with 67% saying they should be excluded.  That's substantively the same as one of the questions from the Scot Goes Pop poll (with a very similar result), but I would guess the reason it was asked was that my own question wasn't so specific about "male genitalia", and For Women Scotland probably wanted to see what effect a more direct question wording would have.

Just 27% of respondents think under-18s should be able to change their name and sex in school records without parental consent, while 73% think they should not.

My observation is once again the same.  In a parliamentary democracy, it is entirely legitimate for MSPs to decide that they know better than the public, and to legislate in defiance of public opinion if they genuinely think it is the right thing to do.  But what we do have a right to expect is that MSPs acknowledge that they are indeed disregarding the public's wishes, rather than pretending that the sky is green and that the public are right behind them. The polling evidence is absolutely crystal-clear: Scottish voters overwhelmingly oppose legally-recognised gender self-ID and want the Scottish Government's proposed change to the law to be rejected.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only). 

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Why are the BBC allowing their news website to be used for propaganda against the introduction of Covid safety restrictions?

It's been a long time since I've written a blogpost specifically about the pandemic, but there's something that's been bothering me over the last couple of days, and it would probably take more than a tweet or two to make the point properly.  The BBC have a "health correspondent" called Nick Triggle - essentially he's a pro-virus propagandist who since early 2020 has pumped out article after article calling on governments to do nothing to tackle the virus, or to do as little as he can plausibly get away with arguing for.  "We must learn to live with the virus, it's not so bad, you know" has been his basic position throughout.  He's actually wholly typical of the type of people who have been jumping ship in recent months to GB News, but in his own case there's been no need for him to go anywhere, because for some inexplicable reason the BBC are content to indulge him and allow him to be a one-man GB News within their own walls.

Triggle has consistently been wrong on all of the major calls, every step of the way, but he never acknowledges his errors - he just reframes his argument as "there may have been good reasons for taking action at past stages of the pandemic, but this time it's totally different, this time we really must do nothing".  A couple of days ago he tried the same stunt again, suggesting that a new lockdown would be harmful and pointless.  It wouldn't, he said, serve the same purpose as earlier lockdowns, which were about buying time until the bulk of the population could be vaccinated - something which has now occurred.  He also claimed that restrictions weren't necessary to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, because "just" 8% of NHS beds are occupied by Covid patients, compared to one-third of beds at one point last winter.

An intelligent hamster could spot the flaws in those arguments.  What matters is not how many beds are currently occupied, but how many will  be occupied within two or three weeks if Omicron is allowed to spread unchecked.  Given the very high R number of Omicron, the answer to that question could be mind-boggling.  And it also doesn't particularly matter that the majority of the population are nominally vaccinated, because we now have credible evidence - including from Professor Neil Ferguson's group - that a single or double dose of the vaccine offers very little protection against Omicron, but that those who have been triple-vaccinated (ie. with a booster jag) are significantly less likely to suffer a symptomatic infection.  So it's not at all hard to see what new restrictions could buy us time to do - governments are trying to complete the booster programme within a month, and if we can just slow the spread of Omicron for that relatively short period of time, a large part of the problem could be solved.

It's probably the case that the type of very literal 'lockdown' we've had before isn't necessary - for example, it's hard to see how preventing people from travelling between local authority areas would make much difference, as long as they're not engaging in risky activities.  And that's the key - we need large gatherings (including concerts) to be stopped, pubs and clubs to be shut, and severe restrictions on other types of indoor socialising.  Lives genuinely depend on it - and it's deeply irresponsible for the BBC to allow their website to be used for nonsensical propagandising against much-needed safety measures. 

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only). 

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North Shropshire: the Scottish impact

I was asked what impact the sensational North Shropshire by-election result might have on Scottish politics.  I think that's quite difficult to tell at the moment because there are too many variables.  We were told that a gain for the Liberal Democrats might trigger Boris Johnson's downfall, but now that it's actually come to pass, the consequences have been predictably downgraded to "he's in the last chance saloon".  The comparison that some people are making is with the Eastbourne by-election of 1990 which set in motion a chain of events that led to Margaret Thatcher's ousting as Prime Minister a few weeks later.  But an equally valid comparison is with the Newbury and Christchurch by-elections of 1993, which the Lib Dems won on massive swings, leaving the Tories in little doubt that John Major couldn't lead them to victory in 1997 - but they did nothing much about that for four years.

The conventional wisdom is that it would be Christmas for the Yes movement if Boris Johnson is still Prime Minister when a referendum or plebiscitary election is held - but the one possible caveat would be if Johnson becomes damaged to the point where it's obvious that Labour are likely to win the next general election, which would make it harder for us to portray the choice as being between independence and Tory rule.  There might yet be a strategic advantage in Johnson being replaced with another leader like Michael Gove or Priti Patel who would still be deeply unpopular in Scotland, but who might look like having a more plausible chance of winning the 2024 election.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only).

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Carrot and stick: The Wishous Circle

"We cannot risk calling a referendum unless we are 100% certain of victory.  To lose again would be catastrophic, there would be no possibility of a third referendum."

"Your premise that there can't possibly be a third referendum seems a bit dubious, but if you really think you're right about that, clearly it's always going to be far too risky to hold a second referendum, because referendums are fundamentally unpredictable things and there would never be a 100% chance of victory.  So it looks like the onus is on you to come up with an alternative to a referendum.  What do you propose?"

"A referendum is the ONLY conceivable route to independence! It's the gold standard!  It's the only mandate the international community would ever regard as valid!  To depart from the one true golden path is deeply irresponsible!"

"Well, departing from it wasn't my idea, but it seemed to be the inescapable logic of your own position.  OK, so you're now saying a referendum is our path to independence.  When are we going to hold one?"

"We cannot risk calling a referendum!"

"OK, so what's your alternative to a referendum?"

"A referendum is the ONLY conceivable route to independence!"

"This sounds like a vicious circle."

"You're only saying that because you're a BLOGGER.  Urgh.  Shudder."

"You seem pretty disgusted about me being a blogger."

"I am.  In fact I'm going to write a blogpost about how disgusted I am and call it The Blog That Everyone's Talking About."

"Doesn't that make you a blogger too?"

"ABSOLUTE MENACES!!!!!"

"Would you like a carrot?"

"Oh yes, I'd love one, thanks so much."

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Do you want independence? - 5 points

Do you want the mandate for an indyref to be used? - 7 points

Do you write longer-form online posts? - 11 points

Have you ever consumed a carrot in Perth? - 16 points

If you scored 20 points or higher, you are officially an #AbsoluteMenace

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) December 15, 2021

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only).

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Another poll, this time conducted by Survation, confirms the Scottish public are strongly opposed to legally-recognised gender self-ID

Trying to commission Scot Goes Pop's comprehensive poll on GRA reform and related issues a couple of months ago was an extremely stressful and bruising process, and by the time I finally got it done I did genuinely wonder whether Panelbase were the only polling firm in the UK that would actually have been willing to conduct the poll with balanced questions that hadn't been converted into incomprehensible Stonewall-speak.  So it's heartening to see that Survation agreed to carry out a Scottish poll in November on the principle of legally-recognised gender self-identification on behalf of policy analysts Murray Blackburn Mackenzie, and that the question asked was reasonably straightforward.  It was a binary-choice question on whether a doctor's approval should be required for a legal change of gender.

The results are broadly in line with the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll from October, with only 27% of respondents indicating support for self-ID by saying a doctor's approval shouldn't be needed.  53% take the opposite view, and the remainder don't know.  As a reminder, the Scot Goes Pop poll had a four-option format, and found 20% support for self-ID, and a combined 58% support for the other options which all precluded self-ID.

So we have a clear division between the views of the voters, and the views of the parliamentarians those voters elected.  On paper at least, there is an overwhelming majority in the Scottish Parliament for self-ID, due to the SNP, Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats all being in favour.  And in a parliamentary democracy, it's the verdict of parliament that matters.  However, what I would urge of MSPs is this: if you do decide to push through self-ID, at least be clear-sighted about the fact that you'll be doing so against the wishes of the public, and that the evidence for that is now compelling. People who tell you otherwise are, to be blunt, trying to con you.  The only real polling counterweight to the Panelbase and Survation results is a Savanta ComRes poll from the start of this year which asked a deeply flawed and leading question.  It studiously downplayed self-ID as merely an administrative tidying-up exercise to make life easier for people, and although it mentioned that there were objections from certain quarters, it was weirdly vague about what those objections were.

Ipsos-Mori's in-house identity politics extremist Mark McGeoghegan wrote a breathless analysis piece after the ComRes poll presenting the results as unquestionable gospel - and yet, without a trace of irony or self-awareness, he posted a series of tweets a few months later dismissing the carefully balanced questions in the Scot Goes Pop / Panelbase poll as completely invalid.  He was mysteriously unable or unwilling to specify what he thought was actually wrong with the wording of eight of the nine questions, including the main self-ID question.  (He did make a more specific complaint about the ninth question - but what he said didn't actually make any sense.)

The reality is that the polls that show big majorities against self-ID are the ones that use plain language and allow respondents to understand what they're being asked.  The poll that purported to show support for self-ID used vague and obfuscatory language.  That tells its own story.

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You can catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with iScot editor Ken McDonald HERE (on video) or HERE (audio only).

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Ken McDonald, editor of iScot magazine, is the special guest on Episode 14 of the Scot Goes Popcast

For Episode 14 of the Scot Goes Popcast I was joined by Ken McDonald, the editor of iScot magazine, which I've written a monthly column for since 2017.  It's a unique publication, because it's a high-quality print magazine in wide circulation that is explicitly pro-independence and run by grass-roots Yes supporters. Many people have probably heard of iScot without having taken a look for themselves yet, and if that describes you, this podcast is a golden opportunity to find out what you're missing.  Ken explains...

* How he started the magazine as an alternative to shouting at the TV when "Jackanory" Jim Murphy was being interviewed.

* The vital importance of having a pro-Yes print publication, given that many older people can't really be reached by online New Media.

* How iScot's readership demographics very closely mirror the demographics of No voters in the 2014 referendum, leaving the magazine ideally placed to reach the people whose minds need to be changed.

* Why only a relatively small proportion of the magazine's articles are directly about politics and independence, with the others showcasing what a capable country Scotland is.

* Why he's confident that iScot will still be around in seven or eight years' time.

* How iScot is a platform for all shades of opinion within the independence movement, including the SNP, Alba and IFS.

* What happened when iScot thought it had arranged an interview with Peter Murrell.

You can listen to the episode as a traditional podcast via the embedded Soundcloud player below, or via the direct Soundcloud link, or you can watch it in video form via the embedded YouTube player.  The Popcast is also available on Stitcher and Spotify.

James Kelly · Scot Goes Popcast Episode 14: Ken McDonald

To find out the various ways of purchasing iScot, either in print or as a digital download, please click HERE.

You can also catch up with previous episodes of the Popcast - 

Episode 1: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 2: Tim Rideout

Episode 3: Denise Findlay

Episode 4: Ellen Höfer

Episode 5: Len Pennie (Miss PunnyPennie)

Episode 6: Alex Salmond

Episode 7: Chris McEleny

Episode 8: Election Results

Episode 9: Eurovision 2021

Episode 10: Maggie McNeill

Episode 11: Yvonne Ridley

Episode 12: William Duguid

Episode 13: Denise Findlay

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